Fall 2004

First Person Cinema (formerly The Avant-Garde Cinema Program), was started in 1953 by Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage, seminal figures in the independent/personal/experimental film movement. Their intention was to bring an awareness of the personal cinema to Boulder. This program, curated by Don Yannacito since the 1960s, has become a highly respected, international showcase, for the makers of personal film. It is the longest existing program in the world that has been continually screening avant-garde film and video work.

The Stan Brakhage Film Series will continue to show films by Brakhage on the first Sunday of every month at 7:30pm in Fine Arts N141. All shows are free and open to the public.

LOUIS HOCK

September 207:30

Studies in Chronovision, memory,
split screen, and more

Louis Hock is an experimental filmmaker and School of the Art Institute graduate whose work has been referred to as a "hypnotic study in motion" (Nora Sayre, The New York Times). "Our eyes are virtually goaded out of our heads" (Richard Eder, The New York Times).

Louis Hock brings five works to First Person Cinema: STUDIES IN CHRONOVISION, THE MEXICAN TAPES, ART REBATE/ARTE REEMOBOLSO, LA MERA FRONTERA, and FERAL.

Studies in Chronovision

Film sketches investigating temporal composition, Kodak vs. Timex.

1975, 22 min, film.

The Mexican Tapes: A Chronicle of Life Outside the Law

Woven from the life and times of a southern California undocumented Mexican community, the narrative of three families follows five years of changes in lifestyle, acculturation, work, and survival in the shadow of the law.

1986, 15 min (portion of 4 part, 4 hour series), video.

Art Rebate/Arte Reemobolso

An edited record of the media dialogue around the public art event. Made in collaboration with David Avalos and Elizabeth Sisco.

1993, 15 min, video.

La Mera Frontera

The film is a meditation on the border and memory which takes as its point of departure the last battle between the United States and Mexico.

1997, 15 min, film.

Feral

A split screen projection from a video installation that asks the viewer to contemplate theatricality of our homeland security experience.

2004, 15 min, video (DVD).

TIMOLEON WILKINS IN PERSON

October 47:30

Concrete images transform into ecstatic abstraction

Born 1969 in Pueblo, Colorado, Tim Wilkins is a recent B.A. in Spanish from CU. He has been making films since age 13. Through the 90's he lived in San Francisco, served as Board President at Canyon Cinema, worked with Bruce Conner and Bruce Baillie, and published the filmmaker fanzine Celluloidall. His films have been screened at S.F. Cinematheque, Ann Arbor, and MIX-NY, to name a few. “Film is the medium where I express what I cannot say with words; I strive to reach a reflection of emotional states by selecting images of my surroundings that are imbued with a certain otherworldliness (this as especially suited to Kodachrome-Bolex pulsations). While I may start with a concept for a film, I like to embrace spontaneity and intuition in the process of shooting and editing so the final product is itself a constant new discovery that often flirts with the lyrical, comical, narrative, metaphorical and mystical.”

Wilkins brings to First Person Cinema the public premiere of Starry Skies of Absolution, along with Below Angel World (1993), Chinatown Sketch (1998) and two more new works to be announced.

Starry Skies of Absolution

Wilkins' broadest work to date, STARRY SKIES OF ABSOLUTION has come to reflect an obscure and existential sense of self-guilt -- and as a priest absolves sin, the film seeks to lift this pall through its procession of concrete images transforming into ecstatic abstraction. Also showing: BELOW ANGEL WORLD (1993, 16mm, 11 mins.), CHINATOWN SKETCH (1998, 16mm, 17 mins.), and more.

2003, 16mm, color, silent, 23 min.

KEN JACOBS IN PERSON

October 187:30

Deep 3-D without spectacles or special screens

Ken Jacobs is a seminal figure in the world of experimental filmmaking whose work from the 1950's to the present day continues to inspire and inform new generations.

Spectacular spaces orbit through unthinkable transformations as seen from changing angles of view. A path of cinema never before traveled, deep 3-D without spectacles or special screens, available even to the one-eyed. Performed by way of a down-to-the-bones projection device, light source, and cooling fan, lens and spinning shutter, it is hands-on projection with the morphing, the equivalent of a Jackson Pollock and then some, that could have been made to happen before the invention of film and film transport devices. That could have happened before Muybridge, had minds been ready.

Warning: the Nervous Magic Lantern utilizes flicker. Not for those afflicted with epilepsy.

DAN BOORD/LUIS VALDOVINO

November 17:30

New Works: Dan Boord/Luis Valdovino (Door Prizes)

Dan Boord is a Professor in the Film Studies Program at the University of Colorado. Luis Valdovino is an Associate Professor in the Art and Art History Department at the University of Colorado. Their works have been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar.

Boord and Valdovino bring STANDARDS, COCTEAU CENTO, and THEMES to the First Person Cinema

Standards

A travelogue of portions of the USA, Europe and Latin America
mixes the concept of standards with facts and fiction to explore the
state of our culture at the end of the millennium.

2000, 26 min.

Cocteau Cento

This experimental video takes the form of a cento -- a
literary work made up of parts from other works paying homage to the
oeuvre of Jean Cocteau into a collage of intensely personal poetic
symbols.

2003, 6 min.

Themes

Within THEMES the past, present and the future converge, as
the Venice of Dante becomes a hotel in Las Vegas. The "theme" is the
building block of the world viewed. Themes is here to nostalgically
observe that they do not make the future the way that they used to.

2004, 28 min.

NINA FONOROFF

November 157:30

Collages of color, life from light

Nina Fonoroff has been making experimental films for twenty-five years. Her work has been screened at numerous showcases, festivals, and museums in the US, Canada, and Europe (including the Museum of Modern Art and the Pacific Film Archives); her films have also been broadcast on cable and public television. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998, and since 1999 has been Assistant Professor of Media Arts at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches courses in 16mm film production, documentary video production, film theory, the history of experimental/avant-garde film, and the history of documentary film and video.

The Eye of the Mask

Through a densely textured collage of color and monochromatic images, a young aristocrat is seen worshipping the photograph of a woman who must never remove the half-mask she is fated to wear in perpetuity. Loosely inspired by tales of the supernatural as well as French decadent/symbolist literature, this film "novella" interrogates the optics and photochemistry of desire.

2004, 40 min, 16mm film.

All films are shown in Fine Arts N-141 on the CU-Boulder campus north of the Euclid parking garage. Admission is $3.00. Call 303 492 7574 for info.